By Emily Harris
The year 2024 marks the seventieth anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which found racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. This ruling paved the way towards integration in public schools nationwide and set a crucial precedent in the fight to end segregation. The process of implementing the Brown decision varied from state to state, city to city, and district to district, each with their own story. Some areas became symbolic battlegrounds along the way, as with Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1957, the governor, the Arkansas National Guard, and protestors prevented nine African American teenagers from attending Central High School until President Eisenhower federalized the state National Guard and sent the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne to protect the students, known as the Little Rock Nine, and enable them to attend classes.
In other areas, the story of school desegregation is less widely known, as with the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Today HISD is the largest school district in Texas, and the eighth largest in the country. It serves the nation’s fourth largest city and one of the most ethnically diverse in the United States. Looking historically at individual communities and schools, specifically Harrisburg and Milby High School, provides a way to examine the legacy of desegregation in areas and institutions that are integral to the city’s historical and social fabric.
School Segregation in Jim Crow Houston
School segregation in Houston is rooted in Texas’s history as part of the former Confederacy and its post-Reconstruction Jim Crow policies that entrenched the color line between Black and White people by law and custom. In 1876, Texas ratified a state constitution that mandated “separate schools shall be provided for the white and colored children.” In August 1876, the state legislature passed a law establishing free public schools in Houston and providing state funds for their operation, which Houston voters approved in December, creating the Houston Public School System. Black and White schools were to have “impartial provision,” yet overcrowding, disrepair, and inadequate funds, programs, and materials continually disadvantaged Houston’s Black schools. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld this “separate but equal” principle in public accommodations in Plessy v. Ferguson.
In 1923, Houstonians voted to create the Houston Independent School District making the school system independent of the city government. Shortly thereafter, HISD began constructing new schools to serve the city’s growing population, which doubled from 138,276 in 1920 to 292,352 in 1930. Milby High School and John H. Reagan High School, now Heights High School, opened in 1926 for White students, while Jack Yates High School and Phillis Wheatley High School opened in 1926 and 1927, respectively, for Black students.
Throughout this time, Houston experienced an influx of migration. African Americans began migrating to Houston after emancipation and continued throughout the early twentieth century as part of the Great Migration. Waves of ethnic Mexicans also settled in Houston between 1900 and 1930. Typically coming from rural backgrounds, migrants made the transition to an urban lifestyle, and with it, faced the challenges of racial discrimination and segregation. The rule of law in Houston designated African Americans as Black, while Anglos and ethnic Mexicans were considered White.
In practice, Anglo Houstonians unequivocally sat at the top of the racial hierarchy in the public sphere; they expected deference, enforced distance, and in some instances perpetuated violence to keep African Americans and ethnic Mexicans in their place. In response, people of color established autonomous and tightly knit communities that offered spaces of solidarity against Jim Crow policies.
To read the full story, click on Buy Magazines above to purchase a print copy or subscribe.
HISD held televised board meetings for the public to view. In one of their many meetings, the decision on how to move forward with the Brown v. Board of Education was discussed.
As HISD stalled on moving towards desegregation, board member Hattie Mae White, the first female African American member, fought towards desegregation and changing the school in the Houston area.
For more information on HISD’s development towards desegregation visit: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4939b74755a2427c9cec549d227e28a1 which provides a timeline of the events towards the road of desegregation.
For more information on Jim Crow Laws, click the link to read our past issue on Confronting Jim Crow Laws.
For more information on Mexican American desegregation and segregation in Houston, read our past article: La Colonia Mexicana: A History of Mexican Americans in Houston.
Follow